Enterprise applications, enterprise social and “sh!t happens”

By On · 6 Comments · In Enterprise Social System, Social technology

Enterprise applications are great for controlling data and process but we all know sh!t happens and we end up stuck in email, sitting in meetings talking about what we emailed. Deliverable Centric Enterprise Social Software has the power to fix the mess. When I sat down to write  this I was thinking about good versus evil or frick versus frack…  It is simply amazing and we live it every day as social business professionals.  We take on our projects, tasks, design reviews, and collaboration challenges in the same manner as the star athlete takes on the big time game. We are ready for war.  IT has armed us  with the best tools money can buy - ERP, CRM, CAD, workflow, PDM, project management, and lets not forget all the goodness that PLM, collaborative PLM or now with Autodesk entering the picture cloud PLM has to offer.

In business it is easy to become captivated by the promises of seamless integration by products like Web Sphere, Netweaver, and Fusion.  Companies have spent millions.  But where do we all spend most of our day?  Socializing in Email!  In a recent customer conversation they told me 80% of their time they are tethered to their email, almost like it is some sort of life support system.  I guess it is no surprise, we are all buried in email, pinging those involved in the resolution of issues (90% of the people we talk to have are managing project issue lists using Microsoft Excel), design discussions and after all the email we then sit in meetings collaborating on all the things we have been socializing thru email, in an effort to stay on the same page and meet the project schedule.  Oh and how did we schedule those meetings?  More email!  How can this be after all the money that has been spent on enterprise applications, business process modeling, process re-engineering, customizing  the tools supporting  the business, and  outsourcing  the non-value added work?   On top of  all this new process power,  companies have then cut to the bone as corporate asks for another round of “redundancies”.

Is there one simple answer to why we are all buried in email?  Probably not, but I’m sure it is safe to argue that complexity is certainly in the mix as a potential root cause.  Business employs people to make decisions and inherent in complexity is the need for solid decision making, connecting, communicating, and collaborating with others in an uninhibited, cost effective, intuitive, and free form manner.  As a wise man once said “SH!T Happens”.  Problems arise; the structured world is now out the window and we are forced into an ad-hoc process, seeking out new solutions and people to solve the unanticipated and unplanned issues that are gating our success.  Even with all the structured workflows and modern enterprise tools people still use email. Email is killing people and projects, but email is the de facto standard for communication and issue collaboration.Truth is, email is just like life support and email is the de facto collaboration standard for actually getting work done.

Enterprise social capabilities are rapidly gaining traction as a necessary component of the agile enterprise.  Gartner predicts that more than 1Billion dollars will be spent in 2012 on enterprise social software / business social software.  Business social networks hold promise as a means to allow people to connect, communicate, collaborate, organize, retain, and view information relative to decision making in a much more efficient manner.  Whether it is based on a Friending or a deliverable-centric enterprise social software approach, these technologies hold promise in breaking down the rigid technical silos and cost barriers associated with traditional methods and technologies.  If you are an business professional in charge of a process or team involved with PLM, ERP, CRM, or Supply Chain, it may behoove you to check out how business social technology can tame the typical email chaos.

The Dreaded V5

By On · Leave a Comment · In Enterprise Social System, News, Press, Project Management, Social Media, Social technology, Vuuch

What a funny reaction I got from Paul Cunningham… when he asked… “what is the new version?”  And I replied V5!  Well based on his reaction and his 20 plus years selling for PTC it is clear he has a few V5 scars.  It never dawned on me the next release of Vuuch is very much like that great V5 release of Catia.  Catia V5 marked a real shift in the ever shifting strategy of Dassault and I guess it is a big shift for Vuuch.

Over the last 6 months we’ve rebuilt the product and the team.  And V5 is almost baked!  Our customers have been a great help as well.  What we learned in V4 was how conversational project management is or better yet project execution and how collaboration is really asynchronous.  Get projects to market requires detailed tracking of issues and tasks and doing so over a dispributed team of suppliers and partners.  But not to worry, Vuuch will not be late like the famed Catia V5.  And to prove it here is a quick V5 overview.  Vuuch won’t be late becuase we eat our own dog food.  Maybe thats why Catia V5 was late…

One big thing we learned from customers was how social product development really is and we look forward to social taking over more of the enterprise.

 

Gartner Predicts 2012

By On · Leave a Comment · In Enterprise Social System, News, People-centric PLM, PLM, Press, Social Media, Social technology, Vuuch

Gartner releases predictions for 2012. Social networking to become a keep element of the PLM solution. Gartner predicts social capabilities will evolve as an integral part the PLM backbone.

 

Market Implications:

Gartner predicts Vuuch as core to PLM and enterprise social.Social networking will continue to grow as part of PLM software. Key roles in PLM, including engineers, scientists, manufacturing specialists, service specialists, potential partners and external innovators, will increasingly use the social network to identify coworkers and others who can make faster contributions to their work. While large software vendors such as Autodesk, Dassault Systemes, PTC, SAP, Oracle Siemens and specialty providers such as Vuuch (see www.vuuch.com) provide social networking, social networking will still need to evolve from an “add on” capability to an integral part of the PLM backbone. It is feasible that product developers and others engaged in life cycle activities will increase their use of existing social networking providers, such as LinkedIn and Facebook, for their business needs.

Of course the team over at Vuuch sees this as already happening. Gartner specifies that “social” needs to move from an add-on to an integral part of the solution. At Vuuch we agree, but do not see this as being accomplished by simply adding social features to an enterprise application. A social platform will become part of the standard enterprise stack (ERP, CRM, PLM, MRO … Social), as business social interactions cut across users of different enterprise applications. For example a customer service rep who logs a complaint in CRM will involve people who are non CRM users. Or in the case of an ECO an engineer will involve non PLM users in the decisions related to the ECO. The Vuuch open architecture already supports this and is starting to be implemented across multiple enterprise applications within customers. The deliverable-centric nature of Vuuch in the cases above would connect people based on the customer complaint and the ECO.

Vuuch Eyes Growth, Rounds Out Executive Team with Industry Veterans

By On · 2 Comments · In News, PLM, Press

Writing a post about team the day after the Super Bowl would certainly feel better if the right team had won… Team is just as important in business as it is in sports and Vuuch has built a Super Bowl wining team. In 2011 Vuuch won great customers and in the 4th quarter started thinking about the 2012 draft.

One agent and supporter of Vuuch we engaged was Joe Alsop, founder of Progress Software. Joe introduced Vuuch to Peter Sliwkowski a Progress 22 year veteran, wo had left Progress 18 months prior to explore new opportunities, do some fishing (Peter is an avid fishermen) and become an angel investor. Peter joined Progress when they were $8M in revenue and had not yet gone public. Peter was instrumental in the development of the Progress database and enterprise middle-ware applications. Peter has jumped right in at Vuuch and is leading the charge on the soon to be released V5. Although Peter has not spent time in the product development market (CAD/PLM) he does have CAD DNA, as his farther was a co-founder of Computervision and few other CAD companies.

Mid to late summer the grapevine was a buzz that Paul Cunningham a long-term PTC employee and EVP of Sales was leaving PTC. I’ve known Paul since 1989 when I joined PTC and was sitting just up the hall from him. That hall of office mates has gone on to create some great teams and great companies – Paul Cunningham (Vuuch and PTC), Frank Azzolino (Team Grills, aPriorri, Agile amd Eigner), Mike McGuinness (Sophos, Spaceclaim, PanGo Networks and NuGenesis), Leslie Manasian (Active Endpoints and Spaceclaim), Jeff Eaton (Simpose and Spaceclaim), John Buza (aPriorri and CXO), John Inman (Verivo, Invoke, Agile and NexPrise) and Brian Halligan (Hubspot, MIT and Groove Networks). Paul’s network and his ability to build a game winning team is second to none - most of the large successful software companies have X-PTC people in the management team.

The Vuuch team is also comprised of Warren Foss (Chairman of Needham and Company), Mike Payne (co-founder PTC, Soldworks and Spaceclaim) and Frank Sica who has been involved in JetBlue, Morgan Stanley, Kohl’s and many others and is currently a partner at Tailwind Capital.

Go Team! download press release.

Vuuch Eyes Growth, Rounds Out Executive Team with Industry Veterans

– PTC’s Cunningham and Progress Software’s Sliwkowski Join Enterprise Social Software Company –

Sudbury, MA (February 6, 2012) – Vuuch, an enterprise social software company, today announced the addition of two experienced executives to the senior management team.  Paul Cunningham and Peter Sliwkowski have joined Vuuch as the vice president of sales, marketing and business development, and the vice president of products, respectively.  Cunningham and Sliwkowski will help lead Vuuch as the company expands and brings the power of social technology to an enterprise audience.

“Both Paul and Peter bring outstanding experience with two of the world’s most successful business software companies,” said Chris Williams, Vuuch president and CEO.  “Paul has extensive experience and existing relationships with a wide variety of companies and partners.  He will leverage his background in distribution, sales and strategic business development.”  Williams continued, “Peter is a highly accomplished software product executive with extensive development expertise, including product strategies and integration efforts.” 

Prior to joining Vuuch, Cunningham was executive vice president of worldwide sales, distribution and managing executive of the Arbortext business unit of PTC (Nasdaq: PMTC).  As one of PTC’s earliest hires (employee 47), Cunningham was instrumental in the early growth phase of the company and ultimately led the companies reemergence as a leader in the PLM space, driving revenues to over a $1B.  Sliwkowski spent more than 20 years at Progress Software Corporation (Nasdaq: PRGS), most recently as the vice president of product development. 

“Vuuch is an exciting solution that solves a significant business problem,” said Cunningham.  “The cloud-based offering gives users significant advantages, including speed of implementation and ease of use.  The strong positive reaction to the product reminds me of the early days of demonstrating Pro/ENGINEER.”

About Vuuch

Founded in 2009 and based in Sudbury, MA, Vuuch is a privately-held enterprise social software provider.  Vuuches deliverable-centric social operations platform uses social @ work to improve business performance.  Vuuch is the only enterprise social software that connects people based on deliverables, rather than relationships.  Vuuch can run standalone or be integrated into desktop and enterprise applications used across the enterprise.  Vuuch connects anyone anywhere, improves how work gets done, captures knowledge and fosters innovation.  Vuuch is focused principally on interactions related to a customer’s product.  For more information, visit Vuuch online at www.Vuuch.com

Chatting with Richard Davis

By On · 2 Comments · In Enterprise Social System, News, Press, Social Media, Social technology

Richard Davis came by the Vuuch offices the other day to have a look at what we are doing.  Richard is well know by the CAD and enterprise software worlds as he has followed these markets closely for years.  Although this was the first time I had ever meet Richard I certainly knew his name from my CAD days.

It was a real honor to have a few hours of his time and be able to delve into his views on enterprise social software.  At a high level I would say he has not simply jumped on the band wagon and while he believes social will enter the enterprise he feels it will be very different than what we see in the market today.

We discussed our view of the market which seemed to move him from skeptic to beleiver.  We see three types of applications being presented by enterprise social software companies – Social Interation (Yammer), Socail CRM (Jive Software) and Social Operations (Vuuch).  This break down is also well supported by many industry analysts.  The skeptic in Richard is well aligned to a recent article by Deloitte “Social Software for Business Performance: The missing link in social software: Measurable business performance improvements” and the fact that social MUST be more than typing a message into some system other than email.

Richard puts out a monthly news letter and wrote about Vuuch in his November issue in which he wrote about Vuuch on page 4 and 7.  Just below are his comments from page 7.

I’ve had a nagging problem with the emerging social communications tools like Chatter, Jive, and two dozen other efforts. I can’t figure out why these things won’t devolve into white noise of a mass of inbound messages. I met with Sudbury, MA-based startup Vuuch last week, and they sure seem to have figured out the right strategy. Instead of plastering employees with the social media equivalent of a bunch of “reply alls,” Vuuch’s Social Enterprise software focuses, organizes and collects communications based on a project rather than a more generic “like” or “follow” that you get with the vast majority of other Social Enterprise systems. This might sound like a subtlety but it is not; businesses don’t revolve around people per se, they are constructed to complete projects and solve problems. That’s how Vuuch is designed. The firm is a long ways from challenging Chatter or Jive, but after the bloom wears off the current crop of Social Enterprise Communications tools, Vuuch could emerge as a winner from the rubble. Stay tuned and we’ll find out. Approximate size: <$20 million in revenues.

Chaos and Value Creation

By On · Leave a Comment · In Design History File, Enterprise Social System, Project Management, Social Media, Social technology

We’ve all been there – meetings that go on and on while you sit there knowing that as soon as the bagel crumbs are wiped away and coffee cups recycled, your team members will return to their places with the same bad habits. Team Meetings help distribute information and get everyone on the same page, but the Team Meeting is also where new bad habits are formed or reformed.

What causes bad business habits? We might look to the Zimbardo Prison Experiment for some answers. This classic experiment, a favorite subject in business management courses, concluded that the barrel can rot the apples. In other words, people base their behaviors on the environment around them. In an office setting, this means that employees are only as good as the tools at their disposal.

Here are a few of the tools a typical business might provide in its daily operations:

  • Email: The great equalizer.  Allows anyone to contact anyone else no matter where they are, the type of email system used or how it is hosted.  Email has become more popular than the phone on your desk.  And if you look at any project team you will find the ISSUES they are working on account for the majority of the email traffic.
  • Intranets: A common place where people can share files and comments.  Over the last ten years there has been an explosion of Intranets.  The last company I worked at had so many you needed another Intranet to just list all the other Intranets and don’t even get me started about all those passwords.  Instead of using intranets documents are just attached project emails. We’ve all asked someone to just mail it to me after being told where it is…
  • CRM and ERP: These applications know everything about our customers and products, or do they?  These solutions are great if the users reported information into them, but in most cases if you really want the details you need to chase someone down to ask.  The problem is the “work” is done in email even if the data is stored in solutions like these.  Vuuch connects the work to the data.
  • Social: Social has radically transformed many aspects of consumer/personal life but has not yet changed the internal procedures of how things get done within a company.  But at Vuuch we are betting this will happen.

Getting stuff done within a company has many complexities that require people to interact based on the data in CRM, ERP or files stored on an Intranet.  Without question email is the common platform for this communication.  But email cannot tell a team where they are, does not help a team track status and we all know that details are constantly lost due to the volume of messages flying around.  Each employee’s inbox begins to appear as convoluted as the business procedures that surround them.  As a result, team efficiencies break down and the team ends up replying on the team meeting to keep everything in sync.

Of course the chaos is not going away – we are expected to do more with fewer resources and less time.  In a nutshell, Vuuch was designed to bring order to the chaos and remove redundancies so business owners can simplify their processes.  By relating discussions, issues or tasks to the data and files we work on Vuuch improves execution, innovation and knowledge capture and turns chaos into value.

In other words, Vuuch helps companies build barrels that keep their apples fresh.

Our customers find that Vuuch instantly reduces team meetings by 50%-70%.

Microsoft Project

By On · 2 Comments · In Enterprise Social System, PLM, Project Management, Social technology

Project plans are a mainstay of delivering any sort of project, yet even the best project teams with the most elegant project plans seem to maintain some sort of “project list”. A project plan is just that – a plan of how you want something to happen. The plan does not mean it will happen nor does it capture what it will take to make it happen.

Kai Jaffe of Peerless Lighting, told us. “We had a project plan but we managed our day-to-day activity using a spreadsheet. The spreadsheet kept track of all the things we needed to complete. It was being uploaded to Microsoft® SharePoint®, but nobody looked at it until moments before our weekly team meeting. As a result, I was never certain of the status of important tasks and issues throughout the week and if I wanted an update before our team meeting I had to chase people down. At our team meetings, we spent a lot of time updating each item on the list, knowing fore well it would not get updated again till next week…”

A project plan is made up of several high-level related objectives/tasks. Each task in the plan can have literally hundreds of details that must be tracked and resolved in order to deliver on that task. A team uses a project list to track these details. Some people would say these details should be added to the project plan – Insert laughter here.

Take for example the typical product develop plan – you will always find a task titled something like “complete mechanical design” or “release all parts”. The plan does not at all tell the team what needs to be done in order to do either of these. The project list holds this information. So wouldn’t it be great if the project plan and the project list were connected?

Connecting the PROJECT PLAN and the PROJECT LIST

Vuuch provides a convenient way for a team to stay on the same page. Remember a “Vuuch page” can represent anything the team needs to deliver. The soon to be released Vuuch add-in for Microsoft Project will allow you to Vuuch a Microsoft Project Plan. The add-in introduces two new page types – Microsoft Project Plan and Microsoft Project Task page types. OK so what happens when you Vuuch a Microsoft Project Plan?

Vuuching A Project Plan

The image below shows a simple Microsoft Project Plan consisting of three tasks and just below that shown in grey are the Vuuch pages that are created when the plan is Vuuched (A page is created for the plan and each task in the plan and structured in the same manner as the plan). The team can now add Vuuch activities to any of these pages. For example the team might create five issues on the “task 1″ page. These five issues would be available via Vuuch or the Microsoft Project Plan using the Vuuch add-in (these are the things the team needs to resolve in order to deliver on task 1). Anyone involved can update the status on each issue from any place. The team might also structure additional Vuuch pages under each of the Microsoft Project pages, further defining activities for each deliverable represented by a page. Following on with the example the team might be tracking issues, tasks and discussion on the “Part” pages and the “Spec” page, all of which Vuuch would make available in the Project plan.

Using the Vuuch add-in the Project List is connected to the Project Plan.

Using the Vuuch add-in the team can analyze the real work required to deliver against the plan and who is really involved in delivering the plan. By connecting the project list to the project plan provides the team a clear view of where the project stands.

Moving Even Further

In the example above the team created Vuuch pages for CAD files, a specification, and RFI and Engineering Change orders (ECO). Now imagine being able to add pages into this structure that track issues, tasks and discussions on project deliverables like Purchase Orders or other ERP data. With Vuuch this is no dream.

An introduction to Vuuch

By On · Leave a Comment · In Enterprise Social System, People-centric PLM, PLM

As you may know, we present a live webinar every week at noon ET. You can always sign up for the next week’s webinar by visiting http://www.vuuch.com/webinar.

Occasionally, we record the webinar for the convenience of customers in time zones distant from the east coast of the US and for those who want to be able to stop and start the demonstrations. We also vary the content fairly often, so there’s usually something new in each webinar.

Today, we presented a webinar I thought had some excellent questions from the audience and in which we showed Vuuch 4.5 running in the cloud (check out the performance of the system in the demo. It screams!)

We hope you enjoy this webinar recording. Also, please note we are always happy to schedule a live webinar at convenient time for you. Just fill in our contact form and we’ll get right back to you.

Google Circles and Vuuch Pages

By On · 1 Comment · In Enterprise Social System, Social Media, Social technology

I was reading Oleg’s post http://plmtwine.com/2011/07/07/google-plm-and-the-product-data-sharing-models/ on sharing models and Google circle and it got me wondering what they are up to…

So what is Google up to with Circles?  My belief is they fully understand the problem of information overload that results from social streams.  Yammer, Jive, Facebook, Twitter, or any other social application generates a stream of information that flows by so fast it results in feeling overwhelmed.  Would reducing the amount of email or multiplying the amount of email by 100X make each person on a team more effective?  I would bet people already feel overwhelmed by the amount of messages they get and that doubling, tripling and worst multiplying this by 100 is not what people are looking for.  But this is exactly what will happen if a message is generated for everything that happens…

IMHO Google is trying to provide a way for people to collect filter the streams you care about by allowing you to decide who you care about.  While this is a very good idea and may be very effective in our consumer lives it will not work within the enterprise.  Take a simple case of a design engineer and purchasing person – the designer and purchasing person are connected based on the things they are working on, not based on a personal connection.  There are many things the purchasing person may “post” that have nothing to do with what the designer is working on.  The designer only wants to see “posts” that are relevant to what the designer and purchasing person are working on together.  For example if the purchasing person is buying prototypes for a part the designer is working on and there are issues, then the designer is interested.

In the case above a circle is needed for this part.  The team needs a way to organize the problem the purchasing agent is having with the prototypes.  The team needs a way to track this issue, no where it stands and ultimately resolve it in time.  This is what  a Vuuch Page does.  A Vuuch Page creates a dynamic circle for the part.  A Vuuch Page circles together the activities that need to be resolved and those people involved.

Want to learn more about Vuuch Page and content specific connections then register for a webinar at www.vuuch.com/webinar or drop us a note at contact@vuuch.com.

Vuuch: the first true PLM cloud application

By On · 4 Comments · In Enterprise Social System, PLM, Vuuch

You know that feeling when you are about to say something and you can just feel everyone ready to pounce? I suspect that by the end of this post there are going to be a few people in the CAD and PLM industry who think I’m full of you-know-what.

What’s going to upset them? It’s simply this: despite lots of strategy talks with customers and high-concept keynotes at user conferences from the big PLM vendors, the first company across the finish line with a true cloud application for the PLM community is Vuuch.

There. I’ve said it. Now I have to convince you it’s an accurate assertion. But first, let me be very clear: I am not saying that Vuuch is a PLM system (far from it! Perish the thought!). When I talk about PLM, I am talking about the PLM market — or what I like to call the manufacturing technology market (and what Chris Williams likes to call the product development market).

So, how did Vuuch get there first?

  1. Vuuch has no baggage from a legacy architecture. Vuuch was designed from the ground up for multi-tenancy and cloud deployment.  (Learn more about this in our security white paper.)
  2. Vuuch’s default deployment option is the cloud. Deployment as a marker for true cloud-ness might not seem obvious at first, but consider what everyone else in the PLM market is talking about. They promise to add cloud deployment “features” to existing platforms and say they’ll “get there” when customers are ready. Seems to us that a partial cloud deployment is just that — partial. And we all know what a mess that can be. Plus, what customer isn’t ready today for savings in deployment costs, the ability to scale by credit card (my term for buying just what you need) and reducing IT overhead?
  3. Vuuch is a service and a web service. I don’t want to get too geeky…well, OK, here goes. To be a true cloud app, it’s not enough to have a web portal that users access. That’s what Gmail is. Instead of your messages being stored on an internal server behind a corporate firewall, they are stored on Google’s servers. Big deal. That ain’t what we call cloud. To really be a cloud app, the application must have an API that can be called remotely. That is, it must not only have UI, it must be callable from other applications, using cloud technologies. Vuuch does this with our own plug-ins, which call an open API. Customers who want to integrate Vuuch with legacy PLM and ERP systems can simply call the API. (Our API is based on REST protocols, the cloud successor to bloated SOAP calls from the SOA era.)

I could go on. But I think if you look hard at the whole span of technology in the PLM marketplace, you will be hard-pressed to find another pure cloud app today besides Vuuch.

Let the debate begin! I look forward to your comments.

Update: By sheer coincidence, my friends at Dassault Systèmes announced their “cloud strategy” today. Here are links to their press releases (no charge for the traffic, guys): one about 3DS and Amazon Web Services and another about V6 “in the cloud.”

Clearly, their use of AWS is a temporary measure to relieve the marketing pressure to have a cloud strategy. The release is full of AWS-buzz-speak, designed to impress the impressionable. But it can’t hide the fact that they are going to load up an AWS large instance with the full-weight V6, assign it an elastic IP, mark up the usage charges, hit you for a full V6 installation and call it a day.

So, say you bet your PLM farm on that move — and later want to get on board the “real” DS cloud offering as described in the second release. What, exactly, would you get that’s different by virtue of being in the cloud? Could it be that DS (though its new investment in Outscale) will simply migrate your AWS instance to Outscale? Where is the description of the actual decomposition of V6 into a series of lightweight cloud entities?

Bottom line, I am confused..and I’ll bet you are, too. I really don’t understand how this takes V6 into the cloud.

Also, I feel compelled to point out that just three weeks after Vuuch 4.5 was announced and we laid out specifically what we are doing in the cloud, a major PLM vendor responds. Unfortunately, the marketing pressure to make legacy systems “cloud ready” today has the potential to, ahem, cloud up the real promise of cloud computing in customers’ minds by diluting it to simple data center replacements.

I realize how self-serving it sounds, but this is one of those cases in which real innovation from cloud computing in the PLM market can come only from companies without gigantic legacy platforms conceived and architected in a previous era of large-scale computing. You need a clean-sheet design, like Vuuch.

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